PAINESVILLE, Ohio - Yuriet Martinez didn't realize she was living in the United States illegally until she turned 15 and her mother told her she could become legal under President Barack Obama's Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program.

"I came here with my parents and baby brother when I was six," said Martinez, 19. "I started school here in the first grade and grew up here. I didn't feel any different from any of my friends. I didn't know."

Martinez applied for DACA and was accepted, like her friend, Jose Munoz, 20, also of Painesville. They have known each other since they lived in Mexico and their families joined six other families that fled the country in 2004 and crossed the desert and entered illegally into Arizona.

Now, they are disappointed and frightened after last week's decision by President Donald Trump's administration to end DACA by March 5. Attorney General Jeff Sessions called DACA, implemented by former President Obama, "an unconstitutional exercise of authority by the executive branch."

Sessions said it is up to Congress to decide what to do with people such as Martinez and Montez and the nearly 800,000 other "Dreamers" -- children who entered America illegally before the age of 16 with their parents or others, or even made the journey themselves.

Both Martinez and Munoz should be safe for a few more years under DACA, longer if Congress acts to stitch together a workable program. But their lives are filled with uncertainty.

"They are here illegally. They shouldn't be very worried,'' he said in January. "I do have a big heart. We're going to take care of everybody. We're going to have a very strong border. We're gonna have a very solid border. Where you have great people that are here that have done a good job, they should be far less worried.''

Munoz is hopeful

"I hope Congress will do the right thing," said Munoz. "It bothers me that people I have never met have my future in their hands. I don't want to go back to a country I know nothing about."

Martinez was in kindergarten when her family decided that there was no future in Mexico, especially in the crime-ridden state of Tamaulipas. After six months preparation and selling everything they owned, it was time to go to America -- even if America didn't want them.

She packed some clothes in a little nylon backpack, put on her blue fleece jacket with teddy bears on it. The jacket had a pouch in the front where she carried her most prized possession, a "My Little Pony" doll.

"When we crossed the desert I had my hands in the pouch and I held onto my pony, it made me feel safe," she said. "It was the only toy I was allowed to take with me."

The toy remains one of her most prized possessions.

She also kept the jacket and the backpack, which still contains some sand from the race across the desert. She and Munoz made it to Painesville where their families moved in with their maternal grandmothers who had made the journey here years earlier, when legal immigration was much easier.

The older women sent their families thousands of dollars which was used to pay the guides - coyotes, as they are called - to smuggle them across the border at Nogales into a new world.

They were dreamers even then.

Martinez' mother, who asked not to be identified, is glad that her daughter is legal.

"It is very hard for us to live here," she said. "People are afraid to leave their houses, afraid that they will be picked up and deported. We have to hide and live in fear all the time. It's like the days when American slaves escaped and had to hide or be taken back. That's how we feel all the time."

Martinez and Munoz understand that fear and they do all they can to make life easier for their friends and relatives.

"We are always running errands or driving them to doctor's appointments or other places," said Munoz. Getting caught driving without a license is one of the most common ways illegal immigrants are caught and deported. Immigrants without documentation can not get driver's licenses in Ohio.

DACA youths face prejudice

Even though Martinez and Munoz now have legal residency under DACA, they still run into prejudice.

"I was walking through Giant Eagle and two women walked right up to me and asked, 'Are you legal? Are you?' " Munoz said. "I was stunned. I told them them they had no right to ask that question and walked away. I could hear them talking loudly behind me saying, 'He's illegal. He's illegal."

Martinez saw two young Mexican men outside WalMart, who seemed troubled.

"I asked if I could help," she said. "It turned out they wanted to return an item to the store but they were afraid that the store would ask for identification and it feared it could lead to trouble with ICE. I felt so bad for them. I took the item and the receipt in and did it for them. It was so easy for me, but for them it was a huge, scary deal. People should not have to live that way."

Getting into the DACA program was not easy for Martinez and Munoz, it involved preparation and lots of paperwork. They were accepted when they turned 16, having turned in their paperwork months before.

In order to qualify, they had to be at least 16 years old and attending high school, have graduated high school or hold a GED. They could have no felony convictions and no certain misdemeanor convictions.

Obama's Dreamers legislation was only part of his plan. He wanted to also give the Dreamers an eventual permanent green card that would allow them to stay in the United States permanently and tried to put it in effect but but it never made it to Congress because of court challenges.

Munoz graduated from Painesville Harvey High School in 2015. He is now employed at St. Mary Church in Painesville, helping run programs for the church's many Hispanic members among other duties. He also runs his own side business, providing tablecloths and balloons for parties and events.

Martinez married at a young age and left high school. The marriage did not last.

Martinez is back on track to get her high school degree at the end of the year. She is in a program to be a nursing assistant and plans to attend college to get a nursing degree. She said she wants to work with babies.

Both said they do not want to return to Mexico and can't understand why some people are so cruel in their thinking about Mexicans living here.

The decision to leave Mexico

"People don't understand how hard it was in Mexico and how desperate we were to get out," Martinez said. "My parents could barely afford to feed me and my baby brother, even though my father worked two jobs. He worked for a funeral home and a car wash, he was always working. We lived in one small room and even that was hard to afford.''

Munoz said while in Mexico, his family lived in constant fear of being victims of crime.

"Our house was always being robbed," he said. "We would go out for a while and come back and find the television was gone, or other things. My family decided they could not live that way anymore."

The two families gathered up a few things and traveled to Nogales, Mexico, to get across the border into Arizona. Their grandmothers had sent them $4,000 for each family member to pay for the crossing, but it was hard.

Martinez said her father tried to get them across the border seven times, even with the help of the coyote. Each time, they were quickly caught by Mexican officials or the U.S. border patrol and returned.

"Once time the agent recognized my father and asked how many times he was going to try," she said. "My father said he would keep trying until he succeeded."

They succeeded the eighth time.

Martinez said they ran through the desert for two hours and it was hard for her to keep up. They ran and stopped, hiding behind trees and bushes, then ran in short spurts to avoid authorities. Her father carried her baby brother, Gael, in a pouch on his chest and prayed he would not cry.

Martinez said there were many harrowing moments including one that could have been disastrous.

"I fell and my mother grabbed me before I hit the ground," she said. "I had landed on a sharp stick that went into my stomach a little bit. If she hadn't grabbed me, the stick would have stabbed me."

She remembers seeing snow for the first time.

"I asked my mother if the white stuff was ashes of some kind," she said. "She smiled and told me it was snow. I had never seen snow before. It was thrilling."

As arranged, they hooked up with drivers in Arizona and spent a month traveling to Painesville. Both families stayed with relatives until they could get settled. They have lived here ever since, assimilating into the community.